Thursday, November 16, 2006

The Hirsch Report

This link takes you to The Hirsch Report (Adobe Reader required) written by Robert Hirsch of SAIC. It is a well researched, and very sobering, analysis of peak oil and three possible scenarios of the impact if mitigation is not in place. The report was written for the Department of Energy.

In essence, the report styles itself as an analysis of the risks and the mitigations that can be taken. Although the body of the report sidesteps the question of 'when', the Appendix does include a statement that 2016 is a likely date based on avaible data. It recognizes that the data may be faulty, given the political realities underlying some the reporting done by oil producing countries.

For those of you without Adobe, an HTML version.

2 comments:

Kheris said...

Ginderske is focused on health, so the activities in Indianapolis ought to get his attention. Gordon cares about the parks and lakefront, so this report ought to be another nail in the coffin of any plans to extend LSD. As for Adams and I am not certain what really floats his boat.

And our current alderman could seriously redeem himself if he would get behind this issue and galvanize the council. This is the national issue he needs to be making his mark with the DNC on, not foie gras.

Kheris said...

Rationing - on page 71 of his report, Hirsch speaks squarely to the issue of rationing and concludes it is inadvisable as it will only exacerbate the situation. He footnotes his source for that.

Airlines - aircraft consumption is 6% of the total for trucks (including heavy trucks) and cars. I would argue that aircraft, buses, emergency vehicles, and heavy trucks would have first call on depleting stocks. The first two because they are multi-passenger, the third for obvious reasons and the last because we rely on them to haul a great many things.

In reality, rolling stock uses standard gasoline or diesel for the most part, and would be the obvious targets for alternative liquid fuels. The AF is currently testing an alternative fuel for their jets, I forget what it is, in an aircraft now. The fuel is going into one tank and standard jet fuel in the other. If it works out they will conduct tests with an aircraft using only the alternative.